Unexpected Path

Written By: Deena Bouknight | Issue: April 2024

Deena Bouknight and Dan Finnerty

There’s a saying that if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. I told God that I wanted to remain a content and active single person. I learned later that around the same time my husband had mentioned the same thing in his prayers.

However, it is very clear in the scriptures – and we should know by now: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.” Isaiah 55:8 (ESV)

Living in an 800-square-foot cottage near Winding Stair pass of Appalachian Trail fame, I resisted hosting visiting students enrolled in the bi-annual Park Ranger Law Enforcement Academy Training Program at Industrial Park in Franklin, even though a friend kept encouraging me to do so. I caved in when the friend called and said a young woman was in desperate need of housing and was finding none.

On a blustery early January day in 2020, a beautiful young woman, named Marissa, walked onto my porch and into my cozy cottage, with woodstove burning, homemade chili steaming in bowls, and crusty bread on the table. Welcome goodies were arranged in a basket next to the guestroom bed. We immediately hit it off and became close friends, despite the 30-year-age difference. I cheered her on during the difficult five-month-long course and we hiked, and talked, and ate together. That was, until the pandemic struck and we had to navigate life amidst the craziness.

While Marissa shared details of her life with me, including that her mother lived in Florida, her father in Pennsylvania, and that she had a twin sister and an older brother, never did she elaborate much on her father, Dan. Yet, fast forward one year; she is working in California and we have stayed in touch over the phone and through social media. She began to tell me that her father was planning to retire early from a government career and would be attending the same park ranger program in Franklin.

“Can you be a resource for him when he comes to Franklin?”

“Sure,” I let her know.

As I look back on it now, I realize that she was stealthily arranging a relationship opportunity. Each month leading up to Dan’s arrival in Franklin, she texted me and asked the same question. Finally, she pushed: “Why don’t you just reach out to him yourself and give him your contact information.”

I thought nothing of it. Remember, I was a committed single. I messaged Dan and, well, the rest is (as cliché as it sounds) history. He called in late April 2021 and we talked and/or texted – for hours daily – until he arrived to move into a temporary rented garage apartment on July 30, as the course began August 1. As I had ready for his daughter a year and a half earlier, I had a meal – as well as a welcome basket – prepared for when we met in person for the first time. He relayed to me that one time, when Marissa was living with me, he asked her what I was like. She said, “She’s a female you, dad,” meaning that we had so much in common.

Indeed, every spare minute that Dan was not in class, we hiked, watched historic documentaries, traveled to local sites, cooked together, and more. By December, he had to go back to Pennsylvania and we had no firm commitment, but that changed quickly in early 2022, and by April we were engaged. He accepted a seasonal position as a park ranger in West Yellowstone, Montana, and I drove out and back with him as well as visited during his four months there.

While working 2,000 miles away in Montana, Dan sold his home in Pennsylvania and purchased land on Tessentee Road in Macon County. We returned to Franklin in September 2022, married at my sister’s horse farm on Tessentee Road with close family and friends present, and began clearing land and building a dream home, which we moved into in July 2023, two years to the month of our first face-to-face meeting.

Dan and I have since learned that not only Marissa, but her twin sister, Tia, had been discussing and hoping for our happy union since Marissa first met me.

Dan likes to say to anyone who asks about how we got together, “If you would have told me back in 2021 that I would not be living in Pennsylvania, that I would be married, that I would be living on 10 acres in Franklin and in a new home … I would have told you that you were crazy.”

But that is the case, and our lives are wonderful and full; we both write and travel and garden and much, much more.

“God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform; …
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.” – British 18th century hymn writer William Cowper